Should You Invest Money to gain Facebook Likes?

Disclaimer: Facebook fans are important for brand building, but they aren’t that important – anymore.

Ever since Facebook severely limited the organic reach of fan pages in the newsfeeds, the power of the “like” has diminished greatly.

This is why it puzzles me a little bit when I see people spending precious advertising dollars on page likes. Again having a strong fan page is a great branding asset for your business, but it is not worth spending money on to build.

One of the most important aspects of running successful Facebook ad campaigns is being able to track ROI by assigning a concrete objective to your ads. I have a hard time defining the return on investment of a likes campaign. Yes they are Fans of your page and theoretically they COULD see your organic posts on your page, but it is not likely.

The best ad advantage is the ability to target ads to your fans. This is a great strategy, targeting your existing audiences is ALWAYS the first thing I would recommend to any business starting with Facebook ads.

They are cheaper, have better click through rates, lower cost per clicks, and better conversions

Another argument for building your fan page is the ability to target “friends of your fans” this is the ability to run ads to people who are friends of your existing fans. This gives your ad social proof in the newsfeed.

Like the ad below, it shows social proof right at the top.​

When someone see’s one of these ads it will say ” [Your Friends Name Here] Likes this” – which is kind of the point of social marketing right?

So those are some very powerful reasons to build your Facebook fan page, but I still do not agree with spending money to do so.

I do however believe HIGHLY in spending money on brand advertising or content advertising.Not everything has to be direct response, in fact with the ad system I run branding or content ads are the key to the whole lead gen system.

What You Should Do INSTEAD…

A better route for building brand awareness with a cold audience (because that is basically what you are doing with like campaigns), is to run ads to content on YOUR website.

This way you can kill a few birds with one big marketing stone.

Notice the engagement on this ad! More on that later

1. By sending traffic to your website you are able to tag them with your Facebook Custom Audience pixel. Now they are in a target group that you can market to over and over again (like your fans). Almost like a virtual email list.

This is so important to running FB ads that you shouldn’t spend a DOLLAR until you have your Facebook pixel installed and custom audiences set up to retarget your website visitors.

2. When they are on your site and your content is killer they just MIGHT opt in for your email list. (you do have an optin on your site right?) – This gives you your first chance to get a lead – leads are track able – leads have ROI. Because leads… turn into customers.

A really great way to increase the chances of getting email list subscribers when running content campaigns is to use content upgrades.

What are content upgrades?

Basically what you do is create a simple but valuable opt in that is specific to the piece of content you are promoting. Say you were running an ad to promote your post on SEO. Let’s call it “10 Things to Check in Your 2016 SEO Audit”.

You pack that blog post of all the things people can look at on their site to clean up their on site SEO and increase rankings. You could then create a downloadable check list people can give to their SEO guy in order to conduct the audit more efficiently.In order for them to get the checklist they need to give you their name and email.

If your targeting is on point and the content is valuable enough, an easy to digest checklist or tool they can use to implement your tips should convert great!

All Good Ads Get Bonus Engagement

When you run any good, well targeted Facebook ad campaign you are going to pick up your share of page likes, shares, and comments. This will help grow your fan page as a bonus to the other more important objectives this type of ad accomplishes.

An ad that just says “If you are into SEO check out our page” – is not going to spark much conversation or engagement.If your content is engaging enough it will actually generate more organic engagement then a likes campaign. In the end it always comes down to content. With good content you can run ads that will encourage, shares, which will create fan page likes, while also driving traffic to your site where you can really produce an ROI that can directly recoup you ad spend in a concrete trackable way.

Again, Likes are important, but I think money is better spent on content ads or even video ads as you can accomplish multiple objectives while still building your brand. Promotion GREAT content will escalate your brand in the eyes of your target market much faster than sending them to your Facebook page.

Your Thoughts?

In Facebook groups and other forums this is a big topic of debate, to like campaign or to NOT like campaign. I would love to dive deeper into this discussion in the comments below.